Die Responsibility to Protect im Kreuzfeuer der Kritik

The adoption of the Responsibility to Protect in 2005 has been hailed as a milestone. Nevertheless, R2P is still a highly contested norm. In particular, the controversies about the intervention in Libya led several authors to judge that R2P has been weakened or had even failed. Theses authors draw a direct connection between contestation and the weakening of the norm. In contrast, I argue that contestation is not an appropriate indicator for norm weakening per se and that the effects of contestation need to be examined more closely. To do so, I outline an alternative perspective on norm negotiation and application processes, distinguishing between three types of contestation: contestation of appropriateness, of realization and of validity. I argue, then, that only the third type implies norm erosion. In the empirical part of this paper, this analytical typology is applied to the debates about R2P.